


Old Wounds

by glitchfics



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Brief Abuse Mention, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-08-13 00:06:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7954339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitchfics/pseuds/glitchfics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When an uncharacteristically drunk Levi has a one-night stand, he wakes up to two things 1) a fan-fucking-tastic ass that won't get out of his damn apartment and 2) a tall blonde who seems to care about him an irritating amount. He doesn't exactly open up to Erwin, but he doesn't send him on his way either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old Wounds

**Author's Note:**

> http://erwintoodeep.tumblr.com/post/128284399014/ridiculous-sentence-prompts
> 
> I was trying to go cute and to-the-point but oh fuck somewhere along the way I got too deep man, I got way too deep and I hope this is good I wrote it so quickly and I haven’t even published it to archiveofourown yet (and idk if I will)
> 
> tw for abuse mention (there’s a mention of levi’s past, very brief)
> 
> ~~~
> 
> Those are the notes that I wrote for this fic almost exactly a year ago. I was going through my Google Drive today, and I found this! I completely forgot that I'd written this, but after reading through it again, I thought it was really nice and wanted to actually post it. 
> 
> As per usual, thank you to anyone who actually takes the time to read what I've written!

“I’m going to need you to put on some underwear before you say anything else,” Levi said firmly even though he could feel heat pricking in his cheeks and the hairs on the back of his neck rising in a way that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. His back was facing the tall, blonde, stranger-of-sorts leaning up against the doorframe behind him, and his hands were busy preparing himself a cup of earl grey. His mind though, oh his mind was back in bed. Back in bed where large hands gripped bruises into his narrow hips. Back in bed where sultry words dripped from soft lips that had that deep cupid’s bow that he wanted to trace with his tongue over and over again. Back in bed where he’d been fucked absolutely senseless and then kissed all over in a way so sweet and familiar that it burned his skin.

 _That_ was last night. Now it was morning, albeit early morning, but still morning. The faintest fingers of sunlight were starting to creep through the curtain drawn across the window overlooking the breakfast nook in his tiny kitchen. The cup of tea in front of him was steaming, it had only just finished steeping, but he brought it to his lips anyways, closing his eyes at the way it burned down his throat and warmed his belly. It was almost too hot, but focusing on the dull pain it left on the roof of his mouth was better than giving the man behind him the satisfaction of seeing him flustered. After a moment, he turned slowly and folded one arm across his chest, sipping his tea with a raised eyebrow. Trying to look utterly disinterested.

“If I recall, you aren’t deaf. Underwear. Now. This apartment isn’t a nudist colony.”

The blonde grinned impishly, strands of hair that _had_ been gelled back falling onto his forehead. Now, in the morning, his eyes looked blue, but last night they had seemed greyer, more intense. Levi sniffed disdainfully, noticing his eyes was an observation and absolutely nothing more.

“Now where was that rule last night?”

He pressed his lips together and looked pointedly at the door to his bedroom, left ajar. “Un-der-wear.”

“Alright, alright.” His hands - those wide, rough hands - rose by his shoulders in defeat. “Give me a moment.”

Levi rolled his eyes and fiddled with the ties of his robe while he waited. He was expert at hookups. Usually. _Usually_ he hooked up and managed to escort himself out or usher someone else out before spending the night was even a question. Under no circumstances did he sigh contentedly and curl up against anybody’s chest. Nor did he let himself laugh when their breath tickled his ear. Nor did he let himself fall asleep with the strong arms of a stranger around him in his bed. Because, in the morning, that person would still be there. And they would wake up and parade through his kitchen _in the nude_ of all things. And maybe they would go put on underwear because he insisted, and in doing so they might give him a stellar view of their ass as they walked away. He blinked away his reverie the second that someone walked back into the kitchen in boxers and an undershirt. Thank god.

“So, trying to watch the sunrise without me?” He reached high into the cabinets, leaving Levi to debate whether his annoyance at how high he could reach outweighed the sight of the muscle in his arm flexing subtly as he grabbed a tin of rarely brewed coffee from the shelf Levi had designated for Christmas gifts he had no use for. There was a lot of coffee and candles up there.

“I tend to not try and watch anything at all with my hookups, _Elwin_.”

Erwin closed the cupboard and set the coffee down on the counter, looking at him with mock hurt. “My name’s Erwin and you know it. I heard you say it enough that I’m quite sure you’ll never forget it.”

He wasn’t wrong. “Mhmm.” Levi ignored the rest of what he said, sipping more of his tea and watching while Erwin puttered around in his kitchen. Usually, it would bother him to have anyone other than himself in his space, but he found he didn’t mind it as much. And that fact disturbed him deeply. He didn’t even like the smell of coffee, but something about it this morning didn’t seem so bad. Not bad at all. “When are you planning on getting out of my apartment?” he asked bluntly, cutting his eyes at Erwin over the edge of his cup of tea.

“Whenever is best for you, Levi.”

The way he said his name had Levi’s fingers tightening around the handle of his teacup. Damn. “Now.”

“Do you have something to get done? So early?”

Yes. Starting with washing his sheets. Usually he was so careful, neat, prepared. But there had been nothing neat, or careful, or prepared about last night. The way he’d stormed off, heart pounding a furious tattoo, teeth clenched in pent up rage. He should have stopped and tried to breathe, tried to collect himself. Levi Ackerman wasn’t that kind of person. He wasn’t some mess that dragged their sorry ass into the first bar they found. He wasn’t weak, he wasn’t broken.

 

_“You’re weak, Levi. You’re fuckin’ weak!” A heavy cuff to his ear. “You know what I told them? I told them, ‘This kid, this kid don’t fuckin’ crack. You can trust him.’ And what did you do? You fucked up! You fucked the hell up! My ass is gettin’ fried right now unless I can talk my way out of your shit!” A blow that left him with four knuckle-sized bruises and a ring-sized welt on his arm. His skinny little sparrow’s wing of an arm. He’s still a kid. Not even a man yet._

 

But that’s who he was last night. All it had taken was seeing his face again to throw him into murderous rage, the kind he hadn’t felt in so long that he didn’t know what to do with it. The kind that took every ounce of self-control he’d spent building and flushed it down the drain. And so when he hunched himself over that bar and ordered, one, two, three beers, when a wide hand had folded over his, he’d looked up into warm blue grey eyes. And when the dark, sculpted brows above those eyes rose, when the soft lips parted and asked if he wanted to “get out of here”, he’d said yes. Yes, definitely. Yes, now. He wanted to blame the drinks but he couldn’t, not when he remembered everything so clearly.

“Levi?” The faint grin that had curved on Erwin’s lips faltered a bit, replaced with a concern that seemed so out-of-place to Levi. Wrong, somehow, that someone he barely knew could look concerned for him.

“Yes,” he said thinly. “I have to clean up, work, and run some errands. _You_ aren’t on my itinerary.”

“Alright.” Erwin didn’t make a joke, didn’t offer an impish grin. Instead he poured the rest of his coffee into the sink and padded back into the bedroom, gathering his things from the floor and dressing himself again. “Mind if I use your bathroom?”

“Be my guest.” Levi gestured towards the bathroom, setting his empty cup in the sink. “Not literally,” he murmured dryly.

Once the door shut behind Erwin, he walked into his room. Should he? With someone else here? He had to; it was smoldering in the back of his mind, and the only way to ease it was to make it infinitely worse for a moment. The drawer of his dresser slid open smoothly, and he pawed through gym shorts for a second before he found it tucked into the bottom. An old polaroid, worn and tearing around the corners. Levi didn’t let himself look at it just yet. He sank down onto the end of the bed before looking down into his hand. A thin, wan child with raven hair, his right eye bruised. Behind him, a man of swarthy face and hungry eyes. His fingers were shaking they were so taut. It would be so easy to crumple. To cut into a million tiny pieces. But he couldn’t. All these years and he hadn’t. He needed to feel the hot pulse of anger that flooded his veins when he looked at it. It scalded his insides, oh how it burned, but afterwards he felt sterilized. Not clean, just stark and bare. He needed to feel that. It reminded him of why he was the way he was, and why exactly he needed to be that way.

His head dropped low, and he propped his elbows on his knees, hands hanging down between his legs with the polaroid dangling from his fingertips.

 

_“You don’t raise a child to use for your own whims. What you did isn’t your fault. What you saw and what you hid isn’t your fault. You’re good, Levi.” That’s what she had said. The woman in the office who had kind blue eyes and listened even when he wasn’t talking. She was a social worker, but one of the good ones._

  
**_Levi Ackerman_**

  
_He’d only seen his file once when she’d walked out of the room and he’d snatched it off of her desk. He didn’t go to school, but he was terrifyingly smart. It didn’t take long for him to catch the highlights._

  
**_Absentee mother. No known residence. Father dangerous criminal with multiple felonies on record, suspected of transporting both cocaine and heroin across state and international borders. Abusive household. Three step-siblings, all missing._ **

**_Has been used for drug transportation for at least five years, exact timeline unknown. Mostly unresponsive._ **

 

He’d seen him last night. His father. At least he’d thought he had. It was like seeing a ghost, looking across the shallow fountain at the center of the city and meeting black eyes that shined flinty and hard. It had taken him off guard, rushed him with memories that had nearly knocked him back on his ass. It took everything in him to look again, to realize the brow and the width of the nose and the set of the mouth - they were wrong. It wasn’t him. It was relieving, but the hot spike of blood-boiling fury that he’d felt had still been buried in his chest. And so he’d stormed into the bar, thunderclouds rolling across his visage.

“Levi?” Goddamnit, even his voice sounded tinged with concern. Like he _cared_.

“What?” His voice was gruff, and he realized what he must look like bowed over this scrap of plastic, staring into nothing, his shoulders hunched up tightly.

“I’m going-” Erwin stopped and swallowed. “It’s none of my business-”

“You’re right, it’s not.”

“But are you… alright?”

“I will be.”

“Once I leave?”

“Took the words right out of my mouth.” Silver grey eyes looked up into blue ones, challenging Erwin to say it. To say one more thing.

“I just- You should talk about it.”

Levi lifted one shoulder, letting it fall dismissively.

Erwin was dressed in his button down and slacks again, and he rummaged through his back pocket, offering a white piece of cardstock with plain black lettering across the front to Levi. “This might help. They’re good people.”

 

 **_Mike and Nanaba Zacharius_ **  
**_Therapy and Counseling Services_ **  
**_(804)-567-7582_ **

 

Levi snorted as he read it. “Talking has never gotten me anywhere. Just because I have to pay for this kind of talking and it comes with a fancy card isn’t going to get me any farther.”

It was Erwin’s turn to shrug. “You don’t know. Talking helps some people with a lot of shit that other things can’t.”

“You think talking fixes what can’t be fixed?”

“I think talking makes what can’t be fixed easier to fix. Fixing it is a job only you can do.”

An image flashed into Levi’s mind. Thick cords of messily-healed scar tissue circling Erwin’s arm above his elbow. He remembered tracing it with his fingers as they fell asleep, feeling the way that Erwin couldn’t help but flinch when it was touched even though he never asked once for Levi to stop.

“Tch.”

“What?”

“You don’t know.”

“I know that.” He drew a little closer to Levi, easing himself down onto the edge of the bed. “I don’t have to know.”

Levi had looked away again when he noticed the other man edging nearer. “Then how can you be so sure that it would help.” The way he said it didn’t even sound like a question.

“How can setting down the load that you’ve carried for however many years _not_ help? How can scraping away some of the festering rot inside you _not_ help? How can finally being able to breathe without feeling like there’s a boulder on your chest _not_ help?” Erwin’s gaze had gone unfocused, like he wasn’t necessarily talking to Levi anymore.

“I’m sure I could think of a reason,” he murmured grudgingly, even though he didn’t sound as defiant. After a moment, he cleared his throat and stood, tucking the picture back into his drawer before heading into the kitchen.

“What are you doing?” Erwin trailed after him, running a hand through blonde strands until they lay in their places again.

Levi hesitated for a moment. He longed to shut down again, to feel familiar, comforting numbness for just a few minutes. But instead he looked over his shoulder warily. “Making more tea.”

“Let me.”

“Doubt you know how I like it.”

“I saw you make it this morning.”

“You remember?” He sounded more surprised than he wanted to.

“I’m observant.”

“Fine then.”

“So I’m not getting the boot just quite yet?”

“Not while you’re making my tea.”

Erwin made Levi tea, and it might have been satisfying if they’d sat down at the tiny round table in his breakfast nook while Levi drank his tea and slowly divulged everything that troubled him at night, the memories that stalked him every so often, the way a smell could evoke things he’d rather forget. Instead, Erwin kept talking while Levi drank his tea and pretended he wasn’t listening. But he was listening, and when it came time for Erwin to leave - when he reached the bottom of his cup despite how slow and deliberate each small sip was - he found that he relished less in ushering him out of the front door.

“You make very good tea,” he said, his fingers wrapping the door handle.

“Thank you.” Erwin was standing just outside of the door, jacket draped over his arm.

“More of it wouldn’t be unwelcome.”

It wasn’t a proper invitation. In fact, it was barely civil. But Erwin understood. “Yeah?”

Levi arched a brow with an imperceptible bob of his head before stepping back and closing the door.


End file.
